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Just Checking In

(Edited out an opening sentence that made no sense after I changed the abstract.) The other day I wrote a long rambling episode about why I’d be a horrible boyfriend right now, as it all relates to why there hasn’t been as much popping up here. No need to go into detail but it boiled down to the fact I spend almost every waking moment working and I have no income. Just what every girl dreams of.

Case in point: Yesterday I woke up at 4:30 and my mind was fizzing with new ideas for margin notes in Jer’s Novel Writer. I’ve got a big release coming up and it’s great to see the software moving along every day. I worked, stopping briefly for tea and snacks, until I called it a night about 11:30 pm. That’s all I did yesterday. Nineteen hours with breaks, writing software. Good thing it’s only a hobby. I got up early this morning because I thought of the best way to handle loading old files that don’t have all the necessary data.

Today I got the software to the point I can write without worrying about losing my work, so that’s what I’ve been doing this afternoon. It’s been tougher than usual to switch from the programmer head to the writer head. Programmer head is in the the wide-open leaps-and-bounds part of development, while writer head is mired in the nitty-gritty of finishing novels. At least the product of the programmer head is making things easier for the writer head.

Of that there can be no doubt. One of the things driving programmer head is that the new margin note system will make things easier for writer head. I started using it for the first time this afternoon and while the old margin notes were sweet as honey, the new ones just plain ‘ol rock. Today’s “writing” has been going through the story and flagging areas with different types of margin notes, so when my writer head is feeling a little more creative it can follow along and smooth things out.

I’m at Crazy Daisy now; I’ll head over to fuego’s in a bit and blast this into the blogosphere. The Anti-Amy is here but not working, so I can’t try to overcome the final smile barrier, but I came damn close to flirting with the blonde I mentioned in passing in a previous episode. (The episode where the New Yorkers came in. I hope a few more New Yorkers read that.) I got a big hello from her when I came in, but later I noticed that everyone gets a larger-than-czech-median greeting from her. Still I think mine was better. It was once again my attempts to pronounce “chicken” that really got us started. She was willing to let me slide with my first attempt but I kept at it – I knew the first shot was not good at all. Laughter and joy was shared by all.

In the She-Who-Smiles-Rerely episode I also mentioned the tipping custom. Here you add on to you bill more to make things round off than to reward service. A few nights ago this was really brought home to me. I was in the cheap beer place with fuego, and we had enjoyed a cheap beer or two. The bartender/waitress, a very pretty blonde woman, came by to close up our tab. it came to 148. The way you tip is to give a higher number when they give you change. I struggled, and she helped me. “Fifty,” she said, meaning 150. That’s what a czech would have done – tipped two lousy crowns. Really not tipping at all. And she expected nothing more, to the point she assumed that’s what I was trying to say. I then managed to say 160 correctly and come out looking like a big tipper. Which I was. I would have been embarrassed to leave a tip like that in the US, but here I’m a crazy-ass tipping maniac.

Now it’s back to the novels. A lot of people start things, many people have good midgames, but the finishers are few. I’m striving to be a finisher.